What safeguards actually work in our government? I think there’s a fundamental issue with so called ‘safeguards’ in that it distills a level of trust in the system that it doesn’t deserve. This trust might make people complacent and less willing to throw out a corrupt government because they believe they are protected from the worst behavior.
I think there’s a broader issue at stake here in that the US has a ‘letter of the law’ system rather than a ‘spirit of the law’ system. Both systems require an amount of overhead to clarify what the letter or the spirit that is written into law truly means. In the latter system, checks and balances are on the members of the judicial branch itself, with complicated systems to ensure training, impartiality, etc. You need strong systems to keep judges accountable since they are where interpretation happens.
In letter of the law systems, however, emphasis is put on the words themselves and abstracted from the judges. These kinds of systems are more centralized because the meaning of said words have to be clarified either at the point of legislation, or by a system designed by the judicial branch to be applied universally across all judgements. The supreme court needs to act as this arbiter for a letter of the law system to exist. Removal of the supreme court would encourage the system to shift towards a spirit of the law system, which isn’t particularly compatible with the existing structures and precedence.
The only way forward I see to restore legitimacy to the court would be to implement systems that are more often seen in spirit of the law countries - an impartial board to review the legitimacy of sitting judges, rotating terms, the ability to oust judges which are too biased, or other systems to prevent corruption that often comes with highly centralized forms of government.
Just so we’re on the same page, could you give an example of a “Spirit of the Law” system, or a country that uses one? I want to make sure I’m not mixing up concepts.
As I’m understanding the terms now, I’m not sure I agree that the US has either a Letter of the Law or a Spirit of the Law system, at least not inherently one over the other. Letter of the Law appears to be the current prevailing majority view, but that’s largely because the majority of the Court are Originalists and Textualist (and even then they’re only really Letter of the Law when it suits them). But Spirit of the Law is still an alive legal philosophy in the judiciary–many landmark 5th and 14th Amendment cases find their basis there, for example. I’d argue these examples and many other Holdings serve themselves as examples of the “safeguards” working, even if the system isn’t always perfect.
Overall I ultimately agree with your last paragraph–that said, I think bang for buck reform of the legislature is going to make the most appreciable difference for many of these issues rather than reform of the judicial branch itself (not that it should be one or the other, but it seems to me that many of the issues in the judicial and executive branches are symptoms stemming from a disfunctional legislative system).
It’s always an ongoing debate because systems aren’t so rigid or small that they can never accommodate both. The 5th circuit of appeals, for example, is perhaps abusing it’s space and position to enforce, challenge, and surface appeals through some very eccentric interpretation of law. Even the idea of constitutional ‘originalism’ or textualism is heavily tainted by bias focused on the spirit behind the words as they were placed at the time they were placed, as opposed to the literal or objective words used. In fact, the two concepts are inextricably linked to each other by the very nature of language itself, a medium which was entirely fabricated by humans and one which is shaped by society itself.
I don’t think it’s fair to call them safeguards if the system has not significantly changed since these landmark rulings, yet is managing to undo much of the progress it pushed forward. To me this strikes me as more random chance - that rules were interpreted in a way that it happened to land on the side of progress. If they were truly safeguards, it should prevent the same rules from being interpreted in a way which rolls said progress back, or acts the forces it’s supposed to safeguard against. A broken clock is right twice a day, or so they say.
All three branches have lost a significant amount of trust over the last 60 years as their corruption has only grown deeper without any adequate counterbalance. Each branch being able to counterbalance the others matters little when capital can be used to control or influence all three branches. There is unfortunately no current counterbalances to that of capital or power and long gone are the days where the government intervened to prevent the accumulation of either. The pendulum has swung to the opposite side, and capital now prevents the accumulation of effectual government.
Each branch being able to counterbalance the others matters little when capital can be used to control or influence all three branches. There is unfortunately no current counterbalances to that of capital or power and long gone are the days where the government intervened to prevent the accumulation of either.
Any minor disagreements we might have on these issues, I think you stated the broader issue here better than I could have. I believe the Supreme Court is an admittedly flawed but essential institution–why I think the original posted article misses the mark–and that the systemic issues with the Court today are symptomatic of a broader corruption of the entire political system by the injection of capital as the prevailing political force. Some may argue it’s always been that way–I honestly don’t know–but whatever the case we’re reaching a breaking point, and I’m not sure doing away with or even heavily reforming a singular institution (such as the Court) is going to resolve the issues on its own when the ultimate source of the problems isn’t directly tied to a singular branch and has metastasized through them all.
Agreed. Arguably the only reason the Supreme Court has as much power as it currently does is because the Legislature has been almost entirely broken, with a near complete inability to address the concerns of its citizens or clarify and update out of date laws. It’s become horribly clear just how much of modern life was dependent on some very unstable foundations and interpretations of laws and policies not directly addressing the issue at hand. Rather than take that as a prompt to write a law specifically clarifying these issues. the legislature has been content to rely on court opinions to serve as policy making instead.
What safeguards actually work in our government? I think there’s a fundamental issue with so called ‘safeguards’ in that it distills a level of trust in the system that it doesn’t deserve. This trust might make people complacent and less willing to throw out a corrupt government because they believe they are protected from the worst behavior.
I think there’s a broader issue at stake here in that the US has a ‘letter of the law’ system rather than a ‘spirit of the law’ system. Both systems require an amount of overhead to clarify what the letter or the spirit that is written into law truly means. In the latter system, checks and balances are on the members of the judicial branch itself, with complicated systems to ensure training, impartiality, etc. You need strong systems to keep judges accountable since they are where interpretation happens.
In letter of the law systems, however, emphasis is put on the words themselves and abstracted from the judges. These kinds of systems are more centralized because the meaning of said words have to be clarified either at the point of legislation, or by a system designed by the judicial branch to be applied universally across all judgements. The supreme court needs to act as this arbiter for a letter of the law system to exist. Removal of the supreme court would encourage the system to shift towards a spirit of the law system, which isn’t particularly compatible with the existing structures and precedence.
The only way forward I see to restore legitimacy to the court would be to implement systems that are more often seen in spirit of the law countries - an impartial board to review the legitimacy of sitting judges, rotating terms, the ability to oust judges which are too biased, or other systems to prevent corruption that often comes with highly centralized forms of government.
Just so we’re on the same page, could you give an example of a “Spirit of the Law” system, or a country that uses one? I want to make sure I’m not mixing up concepts.
As I’m understanding the terms now, I’m not sure I agree that the US has either a Letter of the Law or a Spirit of the Law system, at least not inherently one over the other. Letter of the Law appears to be the current prevailing majority view, but that’s largely because the majority of the Court are Originalists and Textualist (and even then they’re only really Letter of the Law when it suits them). But Spirit of the Law is still an alive legal philosophy in the judiciary–many landmark 5th and 14th Amendment cases find their basis there, for example. I’d argue these examples and many other Holdings serve themselves as examples of the “safeguards” working, even if the system isn’t always perfect.
Overall I ultimately agree with your last paragraph–that said, I think bang for buck reform of the legislature is going to make the most appreciable difference for many of these issues rather than reform of the judicial branch itself (not that it should be one or the other, but it seems to me that many of the issues in the judicial and executive branches are symptoms stemming from a disfunctional legislative system).
It’s always an ongoing debate because systems aren’t so rigid or small that they can never accommodate both. The 5th circuit of appeals, for example, is perhaps abusing it’s space and position to enforce, challenge, and surface appeals through some very eccentric interpretation of law. Even the idea of constitutional ‘originalism’ or textualism is heavily tainted by bias focused on the spirit behind the words as they were placed at the time they were placed, as opposed to the literal or objective words used. In fact, the two concepts are inextricably linked to each other by the very nature of language itself, a medium which was entirely fabricated by humans and one which is shaped by society itself.
I don’t think it’s fair to call them safeguards if the system has not significantly changed since these landmark rulings, yet is managing to undo much of the progress it pushed forward. To me this strikes me as more random chance - that rules were interpreted in a way that it happened to land on the side of progress. If they were truly safeguards, it should prevent the same rules from being interpreted in a way which rolls said progress back, or acts the forces it’s supposed to safeguard against. A broken clock is right twice a day, or so they say.
All three branches have lost a significant amount of trust over the last 60 years as their corruption has only grown deeper without any adequate counterbalance. Each branch being able to counterbalance the others matters little when capital can be used to control or influence all three branches. There is unfortunately no current counterbalances to that of capital or power and long gone are the days where the government intervened to prevent the accumulation of either. The pendulum has swung to the opposite side, and capital now prevents the accumulation of effectual government.
Any minor disagreements we might have on these issues, I think you stated the broader issue here better than I could have. I believe the Supreme Court is an admittedly flawed but essential institution–why I think the original posted article misses the mark–and that the systemic issues with the Court today are symptomatic of a broader corruption of the entire political system by the injection of capital as the prevailing political force. Some may argue it’s always been that way–I honestly don’t know–but whatever the case we’re reaching a breaking point, and I’m not sure doing away with or even heavily reforming a singular institution (such as the Court) is going to resolve the issues on its own when the ultimate source of the problems isn’t directly tied to a singular branch and has metastasized through them all.
Agreed. Arguably the only reason the Supreme Court has as much power as it currently does is because the Legislature has been almost entirely broken, with a near complete inability to address the concerns of its citizens or clarify and update out of date laws. It’s become horribly clear just how much of modern life was dependent on some very unstable foundations and interpretations of laws and policies not directly addressing the issue at hand. Rather than take that as a prompt to write a law specifically clarifying these issues. the legislature has been content to rely on court opinions to serve as policy making instead.